Scotland skip David Murdoch felt sticking to what they knew best was key for his rink as they kept up their hopes of reaching the World Men’s Curling Championships play-offs with victory over Italy.

Winning just three out of their first eight games made this a must-win clash for Scotland, duly delivering the goods with a 6-2 win against a side that had possessed the better tournament record.

The Scots opened with a score of two in the first end and then Italy blanked the second end, then getting on the scoreboard with a single stone next up.

A tight defence from Italy in the fourth allowed them to level up, but as Murdoch drew against three for the second time, this occasion saw him take the vital point to go 3-2 ahead.

From there the Scots became clinical as their opponents handed them two steals to move 5-2 ahead, and by the time history repeated itself in the eighth end, Italy conceded to give Murdoch’s rink a 6-2 win.

“In some ways that was not a lot different from what we’ve been doing all week,” said Murdoch. “We made a lot of nice shots, got a two and got ahead of the game. Unfortunately, we gave up a tiny steal – that was a minor blip but I felt we controlled the rest of the game.

“We’ve been saying we’re not doing much wrong so for us it was just ‘come out and play our normal game’. So that’s one of the wins we need.

“We need to win our two games tomorrow and if we can do that we’ll see where we end up.”

The Scots face Germany and then Russia in Thursday’s final round-robin sessions, with the latter still waiting for the first win of their competition.

Wednesday's other results saw Canada maintain their 100 per cent winning record, while Sweden joined them in having their play-off place guaranteed.

That came thanks to a 10-4 victory over Switzerland, a dominant scoreline largely helped by taking five in the seventh - and ultimately final - end.

Switzerland, with seven wins, currently occupy third place while the USA round off the top four with six wins - two more than the Scots - after their double-win on Wednesday.